deep copy or shallow copy?

[Ali Çehreli]

On 12/09/2011 02:58 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
 > On Friday, December 09, 2011 14:33:38 Ali Çehreli wrote:
[...]
 >> That's news to me. Don't the static array elements belong to the
 >> runtime, managed by the garbage collector, and will be kept alive as
 >> long as the slice is alive?
 >
 > Goodness no. The static array is on the stack, not on the heap. If 
you append
 > to a dynamic array which refers to a static array, then it'll 
reallocate that
 > memory onto the heap (leaving the original static array alone) so 
that the
 > dynamic array is then managed by the runtime, but the static array 
never is,
 > since it's on the stack, and as long as the dynamic array is a slice 
of the
 > static array, it's going to be pointing to the wrong thing if the 
static array
 > leaves scope.
 >
 > So, slicing a static array to pass it to a function which isn't going 
to keep
 > the memory around isn't a big deal, but doing something like
 >
 > int[] func()
 > {
 >   int[5] a;
 >   return a[];
 > }
 >
 > is as bad as
 >
 > int* func()
 > {
 >   int a;
 >   return&a;
 > }
 >
 > though at least in the second case, the compiler will give you an 
error. The
 > first probably should as well, but it doesn't currently. It _is_ 
escaping a
 > reference to a local variable though, which is a bug.
 >
 > - Jonathan M Davis

Thank you. Opened:

   http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7087

Ali